Looking within myself, I note how thin
A plank of station, chance, or prosperous

fate, Doth fence me from the clutching waves of

sin; In my own heart I find the worst man's

mate, And see not dimly the smooth-hingëd

gate

That opes to those abysses Where ye grope darkly, — ye who never

knew On your young hearts love's consecrating

dew, Or felt a mother's kisses, Or bome's restraining tendrils round you

curled; Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this

world The fatal nightshade grows and bitter rue !

SI DESCENDERO IN INFERNUM,

ADES

O WANDERING dim on the extremest edge Of God's bright providence, whose spirits

sigh Drearily in you, like the winter sedge That shivers o'er the dead pool stiff and

dry, A thin, sad voice, when the bold wind

roars by

From the clear North of Duty, Still by cracked arch and broken shaft I

trace That here was once a shrine and holy place

Of the supernal Beauty, A child's play-altar reared of stones and

moss, With wilted flowers for offering laid

across, Mute recognition of the all-ruling Grace. How far are ye from the innocent, from

those Whose hearts are as a little lane serene, Smooth-heaped from wall to wall with un

broke snows, Or in the summer blithe with lamb

cropped green, Save the one track, where naught more

rude is seen

Than the plump wain at even Bringing home four months' sunshine

bound in sheaves ! How far are ye from those ! yet who be

lieves That ye can shut out heaven ? Your souls partake its influence, not in

vain Nor all unconscious, as that silent lane Its drift of noiseless apple-blooms receives.

One band ye cannot break, — the force that

clips And grasps your circles to the central

light; Yours is the prodigal comet's long ellipse, Self - exiled to the farthest verge of

night; Yet strives with you no less that inward

might

No sin hath e'er imbruted; The god in you the creed-dimmed eye

eludes; The Law brooks not to have its solitudes

By bigot feet polluted; Yet they who watch your God-compelled

return May see your happy perihelion burn Where the calm sun his unfledged planets

broods.

TO THE PAST

WONDROUS and awful are thy silent halls,

O kingdom of the past !
There lie the bygone ages in their palls,

Guarded by shadows vast;
There all is hushed and breathless,
Save when some image of old error falls

Earth worshipped once as deathless. There sits drear Egypt, mid beleaguering

sands,
Half woman and half beast.

Still as a city buried 'neath the sea

Thy courts and temples stand; Idle as forms on wind-waved tapestry

Of saints and heroes grand, Thy phantasms grope and shiver, Or watch the loose shores crumbling si

lently Into Time's gnawing river. Titanic shapes with faces blank and dun,

Of their old godhead lorn,
Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun,

Which they misdeem for morn;
And yet the eternal sorrow
In their unmonarched eyes says day is done

Without the hope of morrow.
O realm of silence and of swart eclipse,

The shapes that haunt thy gloom Make signs to us and move their withered

lipe Across the gulf of doom; Yet all their sound and motion Bring no more freight to us tban wraithis

of ships
On the mirage's ocean.
And if sometimes a moaning wandereth

From out thy desolate halls,
If some grim shadow of thy living death

Across our sunshine falls
And scares the world to error,
The eternal life sends forth melodious

breath To chase the misty terror. Thy mighty clamors, wars, and world

noised deeds

Are silent now in dust, Gone like a tremble of the huddling reeds

Beneath some sudden gust; Thy forms and creeds have vanished, Tossed out to wither like unsightly weeds

From the world's garden banished.

O LAND of Promise ! from what Pisgah's

height Can I behold thy stretch of peaceful

bowers, Thy golden harvests flowing out of sight, Thy nestled homes and sun-illumined

towers ? Gazing upon the sunset's high-heaped

gold, Its crags of opal and of chrysolite, Its deeps on deeps of glory, that un

fold
Still brightening abysses,

And blazing precipices,
Whence but a scanty leap it seems to

beaven,

Sometimes a glimpse is given Of thy more gorgeous realm, thy more un

stinted blisses.

O Land of Quiet! to thy shore the surf

Of the perturbëd Present rolls and sleeps; Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy

turf And lure out blossoms; to thy bosom

leaps,
As to a mother's, the o'erwearied heart,
Hearing far off and dim the toiling mart,
The hurrying feet, the curses without

number,
And, circled with the glow Elysian

Of thine exulting vision,
Out of its very cares wooes charms for

peace and slumber.

Whatever of true life there was in thee

Leaps in our age's veins;

To thee the earth lifts up her fettered

hands And cries for vengeance; with a pitying

smile Thou blessest her, and she forgets her

bands, And her old woe-worn face a little while Grows young and noble; unto thee the

Oppressor
Looks, and is dumb with awe;

The eternal law,
Which makes the crime its own blindfold

redresser, Shadows his heart with perilous foreboding,

And he can see the grim-eyed Doom

From out the trembling gloom Its silent-footed steeds towards his palace

goading What promises hast thou for Poets' eyes,

A-weary of the turmoil and the wrong! To all their hopes what overjoyed replies ! What undreamed ecstasies for blissful

song! Thy happy plains no war-trump's brawling

clangor Disturbs, and fools the poor to hate the

poor; The humble glares not on the high with

anger; Love leaves no grudge at less, no greed In vain strives Self the godlike sense to

smother;
From the soul's deeps

It throbs and leaps;
The noble 'neath foul rags beholds his long-

lost brother.

Thou bringest vengeance, but so loving

kindly The guilty thinks it pity; taught by thee, Fierce tyrants drop the scourges where

with blindly Their own souls they were scarring; con

querors see With horror in their hands the accursed

spear That tore the meek One's side on Cal

vary, And from their trophies shrink with

ghastly fear; Thou, too, art the Forgiver, The beauty of man's soul to man reveal

ing;

The arrows from thy quiver Pierce Error's guilty heart, but only pierce

for healing Oh, whither, whither, glory-wingëd dreams, From out Life's sweat and turmoil would

ye bear me ? Shut, gates of Fancy, on

your golden gleams, This agony of hopeless contrast spare me! Fade, cheating glow, and leave me to my

night!
He is a coward, who would borrow

A charm against the present sorrow From the vague Future's promise of de

light: As life's alarums nearer roll,

The ancestral buckler calls,

Self-clanging from the walls
In the high temple of the soul;
Where are most sorrows, there the poet's

sphere is,
To feed the soul with patience,

To heal its desolations
With words of unshorn truth, with love

that never wearies.

for more;

HEBE

To thee the Martyr looketh, and his fires Unlock their fangs and leave his spirit

free; To thee the Poet mid his toil aspires, And grief and hunger climb about his

knee, Welcome as children; thou upholdest

The lone Inventor by his demon haunted; The Prophet cries to thee when hearts are

coldest, And gazing o'er the midnight's bleak

abyss, Sees the drowsed soul awaken at thy

kiss, And stretch its happy arms and leap up

I saw the twinkle of white feet,
I saw the flash of robes descending;

Before her ran an influence fleet,
That bowed my heart like barley bending

As, in bare fields, the searching bees Pilot to blooms beyond our finding,

It led me on, by sweet degre Joy's simple honey-cells unbinding.